PECO Hits the Green Button

from the inbox:

Responding to President Obama’s call for an “all-of-the-above” strategy to help consumers reduce their energy costs, the Administration announced today that nine major utilities and electricity suppliers will commit to providing more than 15 million households access to data about their own energy use with a simple click of an online “Green Button.”  By providing consumers with secure, easy-to-understand information about how they are using energy in their households, Green Button can help them reduce waste and shrink bills.

The only Pennsylvania utility company on the list:

 PECO, serving 1.4 million households in Pennsylvania;

What does this mean?

These utilities have agreed to base their Green Buttons on a common technical standard developed in collaboration with a public-private partnership supported by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.  Adoption of a consensus standard by utilities across the Nation means software developers and other entrepreneurs have a sufficiently large market to support the creation of innovative applications that can help consumers make the most of their energy information.  Companies announcing today commitments to support utility deployment of Green Button includeItron, Oracle, and Silver Spring Networks, joining existing commitments from Aclara and Tendril.

Green-Button-enabled web and smartphone applications promise to help consumers choose the most economical rate plan for their use patterns; provide customized energy efficiency tips; provide easy-to-use tools to size and finance rooftop solar panels; and deliver virtual energy audit software that cuts costs for building owners and gets retrofits started sooner.  Companies announcing today that they are developing applications or services for businesses and consumers using this industry data standard include: Belkin, Efficiency 2.0, EnergySavvy, FirstFuel, Honest Buildings, Lucid, OPower, Plotwatt, Schneider-Electric, Simple Energy, and Sunrun.